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Kaleida Health Receives $1.2 Million to Train Physicians at BGMC/GVI

Updated: 10/18/2013

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo recently announced more than $17.2 million has been awarded to 31 academic medical institutions across the state to help train physician researchers working on clinical research projects, ranging from the prevention of obesity to treatments for glaucoma.

“The Empire Clinical Research Investigator Program (ECRIP) provides essential support to hospitals across the state for training physicians in clinical research and improving the detection and treatment of diseases,” Governor Cuomo said. “These awards also help position New York’s hospitals as international leaders in biomedicine, attracting top physicians and medical students and elevating our state’s standing for future federal research funds. But most of all, this program enhances the quality of health care statewide which will help create healthier and stronger communities for years to come.”

Kaleida Health received a Center Award, which provides $1,197,766 to train a team of at least five fellows. A portion of the award will support the development of a Center for Nanomedicine at Kaleida Health and the University at Buffalo led by Stanley A. Schwartz, MD, PhD at Buffalo General Medical Center. The award will also create the Center of Excellence Transdisciplinary Physician-Scientist program in Global Vascular Disease led by Adnan Siddiqui, MD at the Gates Vascular Institute. The Center of Excellence will develop an outcomes-based database for epidemiological research and curriculum focused on medical ethics, healthcare economics and innovation.

Center Awards are designed to promote development of clinician researchers while providing seed funding for new federal center grants by requiring teaching hospitals to form research teams around themes. New York State is below the national average in its share of NIH funding for center grants, and such team building is vital to positioning New York institutions to compete for federal funding. This performance gap represents nearly $200 million in annual federal funding for biomedical research that ECRIP aims to restore.

Margaret Paroski, MD, chief medical officer of Kaleida Health said, “Kaleida Health is honored to have two of our abstracts receive funding. This essential funding will help to continue to train our physicians as clinical researchers with the goal of advancing bioscience in Buffalo and Western New York.” Click here for a full list of awardees.

The ECRIP provides funding to teaching hospitals to train physicians in clinical research. Funds help to cover the costs of physicians in training fellowships and the associated costs to conduct clinical research. Once ECRIP fellows conclude their training through this program, they will be well prepared to apply for National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other federal research funding. These awards will help train more than 100 physician researchers over the next two years.

“New York State, once the leader in federal research funding, has not been able to secure as much NIH funding as it has over the past three decades and now ranks third in the nation in securing NIH funding,” said State Health Commissioner, Nirav R. Shah, MD, MPH. “ECRIP funds are a critically important vehicle to reverse this trend. This newly designed program will help increase the number of clinical investigators and better position New York institutions to compete for federal research dollars.”

ECRIP provides funding for community-related research specific to an institution's service area. It is an open and flexible program allowing institutions to hire fellows in any subject that represents a strategically important area of growth for the institution. The program was redesigned this year to continue the Individual Awards for all teaching hospitals and create larger team-based Center Awards for institutions more advanced in biomedical research.

ECRIP was created by the New York State Council on Graduate Medical Education and has supported the training of physicians in clinical research since 2002.